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Show 5. of a community. It was this society which he saw as a Garden. Why had he left? That was a more complex question. Not simply because he injured his eye in an industrial accident, not because he was tired of the new group of friends he had established; no, it was because he knew that he had gotten somehow onto the wrong path in life, and had run into a dead end. He needed to make a new beginning. MACHINES Things are in the saddle And ride mankind. - Emerson Muir's inventive genius - if that is what it was - allowed him to escape from the farm. But the ticket out of a confining rural life had become a terrible trap. When he went to exhibit his devices in the State Fair in Madison, he had no idea how far he could travel on them. They were, after all, only devices whittled from wood and designed to measure time and temperature. But what did they say about him? Even if they were taken as works of genius by a public which worshipped technology, his family continued to remind him in letters from home that he must keep humble. Their pressure must have only made him wonder more about the mental gifts he possessed, and how far they would allow him to travel. When he established himself as a student at the university, he continued to impress his friends and acquaintances with |